Plans and Goals

Today my supervisor, my counterpart (now I have met him!) and I went to a meeting with the Department of Social Welfare and Development. They want Habitat to build a number of homes on Mindanao. One of the requests was that the houses be made portable so they can be moved in case of armed conflict. There is an iconic image of villagers getting together to move a house, which shows the spirit of cooperation in the Philippines; so the move part isn’t that unusual – but maybe the reason is.

The traffic there and back was terrible – we probably spent three hours in the car for a half-hour meeting. It is raining again today (typhoon2000.com has upgraded this tropical storm to a typhoon! But it seems to have two names – Morakot and Kiko – so I need to learn more about how the web site works). Sir Tony said I have now experienced the rain and the traffic but have yet to experience the flooding!

On our drive, I started to read “Working with Filipinos – A Cross-Cultural Encounter,” a book I borrowed from the Peace Corps library. Again, it mentions such things as being indirect, not rushing etc. – and then Sir Tony asked me what ideas I had so far! I still haven’t really met with my counterpart, Ritchie, but I do have some ideas. I’d rather put together a plan first and then execute it, but I think I may look for some things I can do right away, since I think that is what they are looking for.

I can tell that they are expecting a lot of me – I haven’t had that feeling in a while. But I don’t think anyone is expecting more of me than I expect of myself. I have said more than once that my goal for this year was to have no goals (well, to go through my stuff in storage and to have no other goals). I still do have that goal – that is, my goal here is to continue to work on living in the present. But I have to balance that with doing my job. And at some point with looking for the next job – I do want to start on that while I am here, whereas I couldn’t add that to my plate as I was finishing up in Morocco.

This evening I went to the hypermarket – where I wanted to go in the first place, rather than the malls – and got a table lamp, plastic shelf rack, and another fitted sheet. And now I am happy! It doesn’t take much. I was also thinking today how much I like Southeast Asia. The Philippines is in some ways completely different from Buddhist Thailand, Laos and Cambodia and from Muslim Java and Hindu Bali, but there’s something all of those places have in common, too. I feel good here.